A pretty good summary. One important area you missed was the propensity of Democrats to spout outright, proven hoaxes and lies about Donald Trump and about his threat to Democracy as they were insisting that he was Hitler. As the Dems and the media gleefully prosecute and actually jail their political opponents, they are in fact doing what they accuse Trump of espousing. The American public know those are lies and are sick and tired of it.
Bravo Tara. Your list highlights many of the reasons that Trump won. Honestly there are probably as many reasons that he won as there are Americans who voted for him. One other reason the Democrats lost, in my opinion , is that people understood that they were being manipulated by the mainstream media and by claims made by Democrats and their supporters. The never ending attempts to scare the American pubic into voting Democratic, caused people to do the opposite. No one wants to vote for a party that is trying to manipulate them. When MSM and Democratic supporters, called Trump a “Nazi” and “ Fascist” repeatedly and said that democracy was going to end if he was elected, it began to seem like hysteria. Does anyone want to vote for a party that is governed by fear and cannot control their emotions? No.
Also, Trump has shown himself to be a fighter who overcame lawfare, assignation attempts and humiliation (when he lost the last election). He never gave up and this showed something very positive about his character. Some people may not appreciate his determination and work ethic but others saw him as an underdog fighting the Democratic machine and rich elites. Both men and women, apparently love to cheer( and vote) for the underdog. Finally, Trump was able to attract a team of amazingly talented and intelligent leaders such as Elon, Vivek, JD. Vance, Tulsi and Robert Kennedy as well as many others. Again this says something positive about Trump. It will be exciting to see how these people contribute to his presidency over the next 4 years.
The point about the “progressive” Left, strikes a nerve. The present iteration of the Left has been taken over by an ideology that lends itself to elitism. The various “critical theories” from the Frankfurt School which they blindly follow are irrational, at best, with the solutions to the social ills we face requiring a disregard for objective truths well settled in humanity.
(Oh … sorry if you have been taught that there is no objective truth. I often wonder if they really don’t see that their pov is an objective truth claim)
Great 12 points Tara, agree 100%. That said a lot of people will take issue with such a sober analysis angry as they are. But we have to remain unemotional and objective in assessing new political realities.
As Pieter said, 12 great points, Tara. You put a lot of thought and effort into this piece, and I appreciate you settting aside your personal feelings about Donald Trump for an objective reflection. (BTW, I'm no personal Trump fan either.)
I'd like to add a 13th which maybe blends into the other 12. That's the underlying concern in America about national and international security deterrence. I think many Americans feel that if Trump was in power 2020-2024, then Putin wouldn't have muscled Ukraine, Hamas wouldn't have done the barbarism against Israel, Iran would have been finacially broken, and on and on and on. With Harris in "power" I think many just shuddered at the thought of how her perceived weakness would let the current and future despots run wild.
Just my thought that the majority of voters thought, "Seriously. Can you imagine Kamala as president?"
I was surprised how relieved I felt at the result. I hadn't realized how anxious I was that with Harris the floodgates would open to every crazy victimology that had lined up behind her. Evidently i was not alone in that fear.
As I have been saying for a couple of years, when a clear majority of the electorate in several countries at the same time moves toward 'populist' parties, it's unscientific and unreasonable to suggest that they're all stupid. Neither is it a winning strategy.
Been a subscriber for quite a while and always enjoy your writing. But, the "not a fan" statement is getting a bit tiresome. Seems like it serves some kind of virtue signaling to cleanse yourself before stating the reasons Trump won. It's irrelevant whether you're a fan or not, rather it's relevant that you are objective (which i believe you are). Regarding your Substack, I AM a fan! P.S. I sense some form of Trumpism is coming to your country( and not soon enough ).
Some of this was said, but I think more specifically...
1. Trump was/is never as bad as would the Democrat and MSM negative branding campaign against him have the electorate believe. Everything has been hyperbolic and extreme. His comments were consistently taken out of context and made into a perpetual attack commercial against him. And since he is authentic and speaks openly and often, there was always a trove of material to exploit. So those afflicted with the Bluebonic plague got injected with even more TDS... repeating these intellectually dishonest chants, slogans and rhetoric ad nauseum. These under-educated (or non over-educated) voters might be slow, but they are not so dense that they would not put all the fact patterns together to eventually conclude that the anti-Trump cascade from the Democrat-biased MSM was really a bunch of crap.
2. Democrat politics and ideas are still not popular. I am sure many of you have noted the inconvenience of the 2024 election vote counts showing how the 2020 election was a 20 million vote abnormality especially given that 80% of those additional votes when to Hiddin' Biden. Regardless if you believe there was cheating, or if the Democrats leveraged the fortuitous benefits of the global pandemic to push mass mail in balloting that they then harvested within our loose legal boundaries of state's election authority... the fact is that without those abnormalities it was likely that Trump would have been reelected and the GOP held the majority in both houses of the legislature. The problem with the blues is that they lied so much that the public loved them... that the demographics had changed to cancel older and whiter conservatives and moderates... that they believed it themselves. But it was never really true. The Democrat Overton Window had shifted left, while the public values and views had remained pretty fixed except for real civil rights progress related to racial and gender equality and gay rights. If you think deeply about this, the self-lying by blues that Democrats were favored based on their squeak by win in the 2020 election, created this wave of wailing depression like their basket of cats were eaten by a pack of toxic masculinity wolves.
3. It is the economy stupid. But it isn't just the Biden inflation pissing off the American middle class. Brexit happened and then Trump in 2016. Prior to this were was the global financial collapse of 2008, then they bailed themselves out and Democrats in charge proceeded to lead a six year jobless and economic uncertain recovery. The 2024 election was a large dose of anti globalist Regime establishment uprising. Lefties keep up the scolding that MAGA is stupid watching Fox News and mistakenly believing that the economy is in bad shape. The idiocy of this position is lost on the blues as they enjoy their higher incomes and wealth in the security of their coastal and big city liberal enclaves... because their denial of the real situation on the ground for the majority of American families only increases the electorate's ire over the situation. The problem here is that the Democrats and the government are joined at the hip and they have taken to manipulating the economic data to feed a propaganda campaign to attempt to manipulate the electorate. For example, the U-3 BLS unemployment rate is plastered on the MSM, but the real impactful rate is U-6. The U-6 rate was 7.9% in August of 2024. Then there are about 1200 labor surplus areas where unemployment is double-digits... and many high double-digits.
With respect to the economy, blues are living in a bubble of their own making unable to see out to honestly observe or recognize the reality for the majority of American families. This is the worst of the worst behavior of the gilded class... to posture that life is really good for everyone because - look at me! - life is good for the gilded class.
Related to 60 percent living paycheck to paycheck, there were surprising Republican gains in liberal areas with high housing costs exacerbated by NIMBY blocking of housing development.
13. It was primarily the Democratic Party at all levels of government that tortured us for more than two years with unscientific and ineffective Covid mandates. It is difficult to ever trust a party again whose representatives thought nothing of violating our most basic freedoms and who attempted to suppress all debate on this topic.
The DNC could have eliminated all of this if they had allowed Bernie to win. He was more popular than Trump in 2016. He appealed to the same lost working class, but he could have done more good for them. Bernie's rallies were standing room only with mile-long lines outside, while Hillary was lucky to draw a hundred people who were required to attend.
All the 12 reason you mention about why Trump won are correct.
But you missed, I think, the three biggest reasons:
1). The total over the top rhetoric and name calling by the Democrats: Nazis, end of democracy, threat to women, racist, garbage, deplorable, etc., etc. Everyone, except the Democrats, were sick of that, and know the name calling was just over-the-top-stupid and/or just mean.
2). The hate being expressed (mostly) by the Democrats. Many of us that voted for Trump don't like Trump's personality. But voted for him because of the 12 reasons you mention, AND because we are tired of the hate. Yes, the Democrats are now the party of hate--toward Trump, and everyone that (they surmise) might have voted for Trump. I have lost many friends and even family members because I don't hate Trump as much as they hate Trump--therefore they hate me even more than they hate Trump. This is so sad. Anyone that has been unfortunate, to have been brow-beat by those with "Trump Derangement Syndrome" have felt the pure, unadulterated hate from Democrats.
3). The transgender issue. This is the Democrats' cause celeb. I know of no one that doesn't think that transgenders persons should have respect and the right to live as they want. BUT men (XYs) playing women's sports, invading women's spaces, and politicians pushing puberty blockers and sex surgery on adolescents has almost no support. And maybe a side point: 3a). I believe that women are concerned more about obnoxious trans men (XYs) invading women spaces then they are about abortion.
This is super well written. So I'd appreciate if you could help me understand something. As a Canadian it's clear to me that we don't play on the world stage of power and security.
Where does the case with all those documents at Maro Logo fit in? Is it in the same category as the Clinton emails? (I was never a fan of hers either.)
Hi Erik, Always like talking to Canadians as my mother was Canadian and I"ve spent a lot of time there and try to follow Canadian politics. Let me take a stab at addressing your questions.
Mara-Lago: I see this just as one of the many lawfare issues that the Biden (the Democrats) government used to go after Trump, their political opponent. At worst, it was a minor issue, compounded by Trump's arrogance (one of his trademarks, and one that I don't like...). At its worst, this was an issue that could have easily been resolved if the Biden government was actually interested in assuring the law was being followed. I think all these indictments have never been about following the law, but about going after your political opponents. After all, when Biden was VP, he committed a similar offense, but the Government blew that totally off. And it was so brazen, that Trump, again, benefited by this poorly thought out Democratic tactic.
Jan 6, I think this was the weakest Democratic lawfare tactic. I think it was an unpleasant scene, but nothing that rose to the level of an "insurrection". There was one death and that was a rioter killed by the police (nothing happen to him). Trump's involvement was tangential—should he have done more to stop it—yes, but that is not a criminal offense. Trump's direction to his VP Pence to not certify Biden's election was just dumb, but even that was not a criminal act. Trump, the showman, even used that to his benefit. And the Democratic impeachment that followed was an orchestrated, over-the-top TV show that just showed the Country the Democrats' hate. It was very ironic that the J6 riot caused a small fraction of the damage compared to the George Floyd riots, but very little was done to bring any of those rioter to justice.
Appreciate your perspective. Yours is a massive country on so many levels. I've often said that if we increased our population by only 3 or 4 times even, we'd see things change a whole lot.
Culturally "a little too left"? No. Cancel culture is not left. Neither are pronouns or trans rights. I love people and have two degrees, so whatever this fucking identity shit is about, keep it the fuck away from me.
Donald and independent media. Maybe, but really no one is acknowledging that he had liberal bias dead to rights from the get go. He bombastically called it "fake news" and he was not wrong. News that targets a perceived enemy and throws everything at it is unfair and, more importantly, untrustworthy, period. As we are learning, Donald-speak is fiction that describes truth.
A pretty good summary. One important area you missed was the propensity of Democrats to spout outright, proven hoaxes and lies about Donald Trump and about his threat to Democracy as they were insisting that he was Hitler. As the Dems and the media gleefully prosecute and actually jail their political opponents, they are in fact doing what they accuse Trump of espousing. The American public know those are lies and are sick and tired of it.
Bravo Tara. Your list highlights many of the reasons that Trump won. Honestly there are probably as many reasons that he won as there are Americans who voted for him. One other reason the Democrats lost, in my opinion , is that people understood that they were being manipulated by the mainstream media and by claims made by Democrats and their supporters. The never ending attempts to scare the American pubic into voting Democratic, caused people to do the opposite. No one wants to vote for a party that is trying to manipulate them. When MSM and Democratic supporters, called Trump a “Nazi” and “ Fascist” repeatedly and said that democracy was going to end if he was elected, it began to seem like hysteria. Does anyone want to vote for a party that is governed by fear and cannot control their emotions? No.
Also, Trump has shown himself to be a fighter who overcame lawfare, assignation attempts and humiliation (when he lost the last election). He never gave up and this showed something very positive about his character. Some people may not appreciate his determination and work ethic but others saw him as an underdog fighting the Democratic machine and rich elites. Both men and women, apparently love to cheer( and vote) for the underdog. Finally, Trump was able to attract a team of amazingly talented and intelligent leaders such as Elon, Vivek, JD. Vance, Tulsi and Robert Kennedy as well as many others. Again this says something positive about Trump. It will be exciting to see how these people contribute to his presidency over the next 4 years.
The point about the “progressive” Left, strikes a nerve. The present iteration of the Left has been taken over by an ideology that lends itself to elitism. The various “critical theories” from the Frankfurt School which they blindly follow are irrational, at best, with the solutions to the social ills we face requiring a disregard for objective truths well settled in humanity.
(Oh … sorry if you have been taught that there is no objective truth. I often wonder if they really don’t see that their pov is an objective truth claim)
Great 12 points Tara, agree 100%. That said a lot of people will take issue with such a sober analysis angry as they are. But we have to remain unemotional and objective in assessing new political realities.
As Pieter said, 12 great points, Tara. You put a lot of thought and effort into this piece, and I appreciate you settting aside your personal feelings about Donald Trump for an objective reflection. (BTW, I'm no personal Trump fan either.)
I'd like to add a 13th which maybe blends into the other 12. That's the underlying concern in America about national and international security deterrence. I think many Americans feel that if Trump was in power 2020-2024, then Putin wouldn't have muscled Ukraine, Hamas wouldn't have done the barbarism against Israel, Iran would have been finacially broken, and on and on and on. With Harris in "power" I think many just shuddered at the thought of how her perceived weakness would let the current and future despots run wild.
Just my thought that the majority of voters thought, "Seriously. Can you imagine Kamala as president?"
I was surprised how relieved I felt at the result. I hadn't realized how anxious I was that with Harris the floodgates would open to every crazy victimology that had lined up behind her. Evidently i was not alone in that fear.
As I have been saying for a couple of years, when a clear majority of the electorate in several countries at the same time moves toward 'populist' parties, it's unscientific and unreasonable to suggest that they're all stupid. Neither is it a winning strategy.
I still don't know why being 'populist' is bad...
In addition I would add censorship as a big factor. People don’t want another 4 years of it.
Been a subscriber for quite a while and always enjoy your writing. But, the "not a fan" statement is getting a bit tiresome. Seems like it serves some kind of virtue signaling to cleanse yourself before stating the reasons Trump won. It's irrelevant whether you're a fan or not, rather it's relevant that you are objective (which i believe you are). Regarding your Substack, I AM a fan! P.S. I sense some form of Trumpism is coming to your country( and not soon enough ).
It seems to me that this list is not why Trump won. It is largely a list of why Harris lost.
Some of this was said, but I think more specifically...
1. Trump was/is never as bad as would the Democrat and MSM negative branding campaign against him have the electorate believe. Everything has been hyperbolic and extreme. His comments were consistently taken out of context and made into a perpetual attack commercial against him. And since he is authentic and speaks openly and often, there was always a trove of material to exploit. So those afflicted with the Bluebonic plague got injected with even more TDS... repeating these intellectually dishonest chants, slogans and rhetoric ad nauseum. These under-educated (or non over-educated) voters might be slow, but they are not so dense that they would not put all the fact patterns together to eventually conclude that the anti-Trump cascade from the Democrat-biased MSM was really a bunch of crap.
2. Democrat politics and ideas are still not popular. I am sure many of you have noted the inconvenience of the 2024 election vote counts showing how the 2020 election was a 20 million vote abnormality especially given that 80% of those additional votes when to Hiddin' Biden. Regardless if you believe there was cheating, or if the Democrats leveraged the fortuitous benefits of the global pandemic to push mass mail in balloting that they then harvested within our loose legal boundaries of state's election authority... the fact is that without those abnormalities it was likely that Trump would have been reelected and the GOP held the majority in both houses of the legislature. The problem with the blues is that they lied so much that the public loved them... that the demographics had changed to cancel older and whiter conservatives and moderates... that they believed it themselves. But it was never really true. The Democrat Overton Window had shifted left, while the public values and views had remained pretty fixed except for real civil rights progress related to racial and gender equality and gay rights. If you think deeply about this, the self-lying by blues that Democrats were favored based on their squeak by win in the 2020 election, created this wave of wailing depression like their basket of cats were eaten by a pack of toxic masculinity wolves.
3. It is the economy stupid. But it isn't just the Biden inflation pissing off the American middle class. Brexit happened and then Trump in 2016. Prior to this were was the global financial collapse of 2008, then they bailed themselves out and Democrats in charge proceeded to lead a six year jobless and economic uncertain recovery. The 2024 election was a large dose of anti globalist Regime establishment uprising. Lefties keep up the scolding that MAGA is stupid watching Fox News and mistakenly believing that the economy is in bad shape. The idiocy of this position is lost on the blues as they enjoy their higher incomes and wealth in the security of their coastal and big city liberal enclaves... because their denial of the real situation on the ground for the majority of American families only increases the electorate's ire over the situation. The problem here is that the Democrats and the government are joined at the hip and they have taken to manipulating the economic data to feed a propaganda campaign to attempt to manipulate the electorate. For example, the U-3 BLS unemployment rate is plastered on the MSM, but the real impactful rate is U-6. The U-6 rate was 7.9% in August of 2024. Then there are about 1200 labor surplus areas where unemployment is double-digits... and many high double-digits.
With respect to the economy, blues are living in a bubble of their own making unable to see out to honestly observe or recognize the reality for the majority of American families. This is the worst of the worst behavior of the gilded class... to posture that life is really good for everyone because - look at me! - life is good for the gilded class.
Related to 60 percent living paycheck to paycheck, there were surprising Republican gains in liberal areas with high housing costs exacerbated by NIMBY blocking of housing development.
13. It was primarily the Democratic Party at all levels of government that tortured us for more than two years with unscientific and ineffective Covid mandates. It is difficult to ever trust a party again whose representatives thought nothing of violating our most basic freedoms and who attempted to suppress all debate on this topic.
The DNC could have eliminated all of this if they had allowed Bernie to win. He was more popular than Trump in 2016. He appealed to the same lost working class, but he could have done more good for them. Bernie's rallies were standing room only with mile-long lines outside, while Hillary was lucky to draw a hundred people who were required to attend.
The 3 things she did have going for her were:
1. You can talk white progressive women into anything. Just use anything emotional and smear that estrogen on with a trowel.
2. The propaganda machine of the MSM.
3. Women with no sense of humor, but able to throw out reason and logic.
It usually works, but not this time.
All the 12 reason you mention about why Trump won are correct.
But you missed, I think, the three biggest reasons:
1). The total over the top rhetoric and name calling by the Democrats: Nazis, end of democracy, threat to women, racist, garbage, deplorable, etc., etc. Everyone, except the Democrats, were sick of that, and know the name calling was just over-the-top-stupid and/or just mean.
2). The hate being expressed (mostly) by the Democrats. Many of us that voted for Trump don't like Trump's personality. But voted for him because of the 12 reasons you mention, AND because we are tired of the hate. Yes, the Democrats are now the party of hate--toward Trump, and everyone that (they surmise) might have voted for Trump. I have lost many friends and even family members because I don't hate Trump as much as they hate Trump--therefore they hate me even more than they hate Trump. This is so sad. Anyone that has been unfortunate, to have been brow-beat by those with "Trump Derangement Syndrome" have felt the pure, unadulterated hate from Democrats.
3). The transgender issue. This is the Democrats' cause celeb. I know of no one that doesn't think that transgenders persons should have respect and the right to live as they want. BUT men (XYs) playing women's sports, invading women's spaces, and politicians pushing puberty blockers and sex surgery on adolescents has almost no support. And maybe a side point: 3a). I believe that women are concerned more about obnoxious trans men (XYs) invading women spaces then they are about abortion.
This is super well written. So I'd appreciate if you could help me understand something. As a Canadian it's clear to me that we don't play on the world stage of power and security.
Where does the case with all those documents at Maro Logo fit in? Is it in the same category as the Clinton emails? (I was never a fan of hers either.)
Also - what about Jan 6th?
Hi Erik, Always like talking to Canadians as my mother was Canadian and I"ve spent a lot of time there and try to follow Canadian politics. Let me take a stab at addressing your questions.
Mara-Lago: I see this just as one of the many lawfare issues that the Biden (the Democrats) government used to go after Trump, their political opponent. At worst, it was a minor issue, compounded by Trump's arrogance (one of his trademarks, and one that I don't like...). At its worst, this was an issue that could have easily been resolved if the Biden government was actually interested in assuring the law was being followed. I think all these indictments have never been about following the law, but about going after your political opponents. After all, when Biden was VP, he committed a similar offense, but the Government blew that totally off. And it was so brazen, that Trump, again, benefited by this poorly thought out Democratic tactic.
Jan 6, I think this was the weakest Democratic lawfare tactic. I think it was an unpleasant scene, but nothing that rose to the level of an "insurrection". There was one death and that was a rioter killed by the police (nothing happen to him). Trump's involvement was tangential—should he have done more to stop it—yes, but that is not a criminal offense. Trump's direction to his VP Pence to not certify Biden's election was just dumb, but even that was not a criminal act. Trump, the showman, even used that to his benefit. And the Democratic impeachment that followed was an orchestrated, over-the-top TV show that just showed the Country the Democrats' hate. It was very ironic that the J6 riot caused a small fraction of the damage compared to the George Floyd riots, but very little was done to bring any of those rioter to justice.
Appreciate your perspective. Yours is a massive country on so many levels. I've often said that if we increased our population by only 3 or 4 times even, we'd see things change a whole lot.
Great list but a little soft If I may say.
Culturally "a little too left"? No. Cancel culture is not left. Neither are pronouns or trans rights. I love people and have two degrees, so whatever this fucking identity shit is about, keep it the fuck away from me.
Donald and independent media. Maybe, but really no one is acknowledging that he had liberal bias dead to rights from the get go. He bombastically called it "fake news" and he was not wrong. News that targets a perceived enemy and throws everything at it is unfair and, more importantly, untrustworthy, period. As we are learning, Donald-speak is fiction that describes truth.
#5 to 12 were the reasons. #1 to 4 assisted.